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One of a series of Policy Briefs made possible by funding fromthe Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.EPIC/EPRU policy briefs are peer reviewed by members of theEditorial Review Board. For information on the board and itsmembers, visit: http://epicpolicy.org/editorial-board

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Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success David C. Berliner Arizona State University Executive SummaryThe U.S. has set as a national goal the narrowing of the achievement gap betweenlower income and middle-class students, and that between racial and ethnicgroups. This is a key purpose of the No Child Left Behind act, which reliesprimarily on assessment to promote changes within schools to accomplish thatgoal. However, out-of-school factors (OSFs) play a powerful role in generatingexisting achievement gaps, and if these factors are not attended to with equalvigor, our national aspirations will be thwarted.This brief details six OSFs common among the poor that significantly affect thehealth and learning opportunities of children, and accordingly limit what schoolscan accomplish on their own: (1) low birth-weight and non-genetic prenatalinfluences on children; (2) inadequate medical, dental, and vision care, often aresult of inadequate or no medical insurance; (3) food insecurity; (4)environmental pollutants; (5) family relations and family stress; and (6)neighborhood characteristics. These OSFs are related to a host of poverty-inducedphysical, sociological, and psychological problems that children often bring toschool, ranging from neurological damage and attention disorders to excessiveabsenteeism, linguistic underdevelopment, and oppositional behavior.Also discussed is a seventh OSF, extended learning opportunities, such as pre-school, after school, and summer school programs that can help to mitigate someof the harm caused by the first six factors.Because America’s schools are so highly segregated by income, race, andethnicity, problems related to poverty occur simultaneously, with greaterfrequency, and act cumulatively in schools serving disadvantaged communities.These schools therefore face significantly greater challenges than schools servingwealthier children, and their limited resources are often overwhelmed. Efforts toimprove educational outcomes in these schools, attempting to drive changethrough test-based accountability, are thus unlikely to succeed unlessaccompanied by policies to address the OSFs that negatively affect large numbersof our nations’ students. Poverty limits student potential; inputs to schools affectoutputs from them.Therefore, it is recommended that efforts be made to:http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 1 of 52

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• Reduce the rate of low birth weight children among African Americans,• Reduce drug and alcohol abuse,• Reduce pollutants in our cites and move people away from toxic sites,• Provide universal and free medical care for all citizens,• Insure that no one suffers from food insecurity,• Reduce the rates of family violence in low-income households,• Improve mental health services among the poor,• More equitably distribute low-income housing throughout communities,• Reduce both the mobility and absenteeism rates of children,• Provide high-quality preschools for all children, and• Provide summer programs for the poor to reduce summer losses in their academic achievement.http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 2 of 52

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Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success David C. Berliner1 Arizona State University Introduction No one doubts that schools can be powerful influences on youth, whenthose schools are safe and have engaging curriculum and experienced and caringteachers who possess subject matter competency and pedagogical skill. ButAmerica’s public schools often come up short in these regards. And even near-perfect schools can show disappointing results, since school effects have limits. Inpart, this is because of time: U.S. students spend about 1,150 waking hours a yearin school versus about 4,700 more waking hours per year in their families andneighborhoods.2 Further, many schools have a one-size-fits-all orientation, noteasily accommodating the myriad differences in talents and interests among youthor helping them cope, in ways that youth find nurturing or useful, with school aswell as non-school factors associated with family, community, society, and life’sproblems. Such non-school factors, in fact, exert a powerful influence on studentbehavior and school learning, and those that are harmful (for example, having amild birth defect) hurt impoverished youth more frequently and with greaterseverity than they do youth in middle-class or wealthy families. Recently, some of the nation’s educational leaders have become concernedabout such deleterious out-of-school influences on students, an issue brought tothe fore by the difficulties that the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law has hadproducing sizeable achievement gains among poor children. Susan Neuman, forexample, formerly Assistant Secretary of Education in the George W. Bushadministration and an overseer of NCLB, has clearly stated what many educationresearchers have argued for some time—namely, that schools alone will notordinarily be able to improve achievement for poor and minority students.3 Sheand others who recognize the limits of NCLB, including some of the mostdistinguished educators in the nation, have joined together to promote a “broader,bolder approach” to education. They argue: The potential effectiveness of NCLB has been seriously undermined ... by its acceptance of the popular assumptions that bad schools are the major reason for low achievement, and that an academic program revolving around standards, testing, teacher training, and accountability can, in and of itself, offset the full impact of low socioeconomic status on achievement.4http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 3 of 52

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This brief addresses these concerns, offering an overview of key out-of-school-factors (OSFs) that contribute to differences in student behavior andacademic achievement. The effects of OSFs on impoverished youth merit close attention for threereasons: First, studies of school-age children during the school year and over theirsummer break strongly suggest that most of the inequality in cognitive skills anddifferences in behavior come from family and neighborhood sources rather thanfrom schools. The research evidence is quite persuasive that schools actually tendto reduce the inequality generated by OSFs and have the potential to offer muchgreater reductions.5 Second, despite their best efforts at reducing inequalities, inequalities donot easily go away, with the result that America’s schools generally work lesswell for impoverished youth and much better for those more fortunate. Recent testresults from America’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) andfrom the international comparisons in both the Trends in InternationalMathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Program on InternationalStudent Assessment (PISA) all show this pattern. Figure 1 (following), fromTIMSS 2007, illustrates how closely linked school scores are to the school’senrollment of low-income students. Comparing the scores of schools in 58countries in the TIMSS pool against only wealthier American schools, instead ofoverall averages, makes the link clear. Looking first at the American schools withthe lowest levels of poverty—where under 10% of the students are poor—we findthat the average scores of fourth grade American students are higher than in allbut two of the other 58 countries.6 Similarly, in American schools where under25% of the students are poor, the average scores of fourth grade Americanstudents are higher than all but four of these other countries. On average, then, about 31% of American students of all races andethnicities (about 15 million out of some 50 million public school students),attend schools that outperform students in 54 other nations in mathematics. Theseare schools, however, that have few poor students.7 This suggests that if familiesfind ways for their children to attend public schools where poverty is not a majorschool challenge, then, on average, their children will have better achievementtest performance than students in all but a handful of other nations. In American schools where more than 25% of the schools’ students arepoor, however, achievement is not nearly as good. This suggests thatpolicymakers might attend more to the OSFs among this population—even asNCLB, the nation’s current educational policy, primarily focuses on within-school processes that contribute to the achievement gap. It also suggests the thirdreason for concern about OSFs and their impact on impoverished youth: thecontemporary zeitgeist. We live in “outcome-oriented,” “bottom line,” “accountability” times.This brief is being written after NCLB has dominated educational discourse formore than seven years. This law, reflecting and enhancing the accountability-oriented zeitgeist in which we live, focuses almost exclusively on school outputs,http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 4 of 52

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Figure 1. Average mathematics scores of U. S. fourth grade students onTIMSS 2007, by percentage of students in public school eligible for free andreduced lunch.8particularly reading and mathematics achievement test scores. The law waspurposely designed to pay little attention to school inputs in order to ensure thatteachers and school administrators had “no excuses” when it came to bettereducating impoverished youth. The occasional school that overcomes the effects of academicallydetrimental inputs—high rates of food insecurity, single heads of households,family and neighborhood violence, homelessness and transiency, illnesses anddental needs that are not medically insured, special education needs, languageminority populations, and so forth—has allowed some advocates to declare thatschools, virtually alone, can ensure the high achievement of impoverished youth.This point is made by Chenoweth9 in a book documenting schools that “beat theodds,” and it is the point made repeatedly by Kati Haycock, the influential head ofthe Education Trust,10 and other organizations like hers. From Equal Opportunity to the Achievement Gap Let us be clear about their position and the one taken here: People withstrong faith in public schools are to be cherished, and the same is true of eachexample of schools that overcome enormous odds. The methods of those schoolsneed to be studied, evaluated, and if found to be worth emulating, promoted andreplicated so that more educators will be influenced by their success.http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 5 of 52

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But these successes should not be used as a cudgel to attack othereducators and schools. And they should certainly never be used to excuse societalneglect of the very causes of the obstacles that extraordinary educators mustovercome. It is a poor policy indeed that erects huge barriers to the success ofmillions of students, cherry-picks and praises a few schools that appear to clearthose barriers, and then blames the other schools for their failure to do the same. Yet the nation, through NCLB and the writings of people like those justcited, has effectively adopted this outcomes-oriented, input-ignoring philosophy.Policy makers pay great attention to “the achievement gap” that exists betweenpoor and more-advantaged students and, via NCLB, now even require thatschools eliminate the gap completely by 2014. This approach is perfectly sensibleif divorced from the actual schooling context. But in the real world outputs haverelationships to inputs that cannot be ignored. Our nation, perhaps grown weary ofhearing the same old claims about U.S. children being made unequal by theeconomic and socials systems of our society, has turned to a callous policy thatallows us to officially ignore the inputs or OSFs that unquestionably affectachievement. Schools are told to fix problems that they have never been able tofix and that largely lie outside their zone of influence. Journalist James Crawford has analyzed how major newspapers andeducational weeklies have switched from concern with OSFs and issues of equityto concerns about the “achievement gap” (concerns focused solely on theFigure 2. The number of times that The New York Times wrote about “equaleducational opportunity” and “the achievement gap”11http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 6 of 52

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Figure 3. The number of times that Education Week wrote about “equaleducational opportunity” and “the achievement gap”12outcomes of the educational system). Figures 2 (previous) and 3 show how, overtime, equity issues stopped framing the debate about how to improve our schools;instead, the “achievement gap,” or outcome-oriented thinking, gained prominenceas a way to frame the debate about school improvement. These data are from twoof America’s most influential press outlets in shaping education policy discourse. It is within this context that this brief offers a reminder that inputs,including many of the equity issues that have dropped largely out of sight, havenever stopped affecting the achievement of our most impoverished youth. In fact,it is the position taken here that we can never reduce the achievement gapbetween poor and non-poor children, between African American and whitechildren, or between Hispanic and Anglo children, unless OSFs that positively ornegatively affect achievement are more equitably distributed. In the U.S. today,too many OSFs are strongly correlated with class, race, and ethnicity, and toomany children are in schools segregated by those very same characteristics.13 Data on the current state of school segregation by race and ethnicity arepresented in Table 1 (following), showing that less than 1% of white studentsattend schools that are more than 90% black or Latino. On the other hand, about40% of black and Latino students are in schools in which the students are almostall black and Latino. Data in Table 2 illustrate the relationship between race,ethnicity, and poverty among students. As the table shows, in 2006-07 the averagewhite student attended a school in which about 30% of the students were low-income. But the average black or Hispanic student was in a school where nearlyhttp://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 7 of 52

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60% of the students were classified as low-income; similarly, the averageAmerican Indian was in a school where more than half the students were poor. Overall, fewer than 4% of white students and less than a tenth of Asianstudents—in contrast to 40% of black and Latino students—attend schools where70-100% of the children are poor. These schools are often dominated by the manydimensions of intense, concentrated, and isolated poverty that shapes the lives ofstudents and families. While most whites and almost half of Asians attend schoolswith 0-30% poor students, that is true for only one-sixth of blacks and one-fifth ofLatinos.Table 1. Percentage of Students in 90-100% Minority Schools, 2006-0714 Group Percent of Students in 90-100% Minority Schools white 0.92 black 38.5 Latino 40.0 Asian 16.2 American Indian 20.2Table 2. Average Percentage of Poor Students in a Student’s School by Race,2006-0715 Group Percent of low-income Students in the School white 31.5 black 58.8 Latino 57.4 Asian 35.8 American Indian 52.6 Identifying Out-of-School Factors This brief begins with the empirically supported premise that OSFs greatlyinfluence school achievement and that OSFs are not distributed randomlythroughout society. Instead, the negative effects of many OSFs are concentratedin the schools that serve poor and minority children and families. This increasesthe burden on these schools in such a way as to make broad reductions in theachievement gap nearly impossible. If this brief is convincing, readers willunderstand that NCLB and the philosophy that surrounds it has promoted animbalance in the search for ways to eliminate the achievement gap, an imbalancethat is both harmful to our country and embarrassing because our citizens believethat we should spread our democratic values worldwide. The potency of seven ofthese distinct but interrelated OSFs is presented below.OSF1: Birth-weight and non-genetic prenatal influences Measured school achievement consistently demonstrates racially disparateoutcomes. Typically, African American students perform less well on traditionalhttp://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 8 of 52

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measures of schooling than white students. Underlying current educational policyis an implicit theory of causal inputs that attributes this achievement gap to schoolmechanisms. Yet it seems clear that some of the gap originates in the availablehealth care and social practices common among low-income African Americans.For example, normal birth weight in the U.S. is about 5 lb., 8 oz. Low birthweight (LBW) children are between 3 lb., 5 oz. and 5 lb., 8 oz. But very low birthweight children (VLBW) children and extremely low birth weight children(ELBW) have even lower weights. Modern medicine has increased the numbersof all LBW children who live, especially among the VLBW and ELBWpopulations. But these children have many more cognitive and behavioralproblems—problems that schools (generally public schools) must accommodate. This fact is relevant to the achievement gap because LBW babies are notdistributed randomly among racial or income groups. Table 3 displays data ongestation time and birth weight.16 Preterm children are born to black Americans58% more frequently than they are to whites. While that is reason enough forconcern, Very Preterm children are among those expected to have the mostcognitive and behavioral trouble in school—and they are born to black parents246% more frequently than to white parents. Hispanics, meanwhile, havegestation times close to whites, although Hispanic communities are frequentlylow-income. Hispanics also seem to have children who weigh more both at birththan their white counterparts, perhaps reflecting differences in the culture of theHispanic American community. In general, black Americans are almost twice as likely as whites to have aLBW child, and they are 270% more likely to have a VLBW child. LBW childrenoften have a low Apgar score, a composite based on five variables measuredimmediately after birth: Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, and Respiration.Low Apgar scores indicate various problems that often include neurologicaldamage; black American newborns have low Apgar scores twice as often as doother races. Fortunately, many LBW children show few signs of impairment. Butmany also display cognitive and behavioral difficulties soon after birth, often dueto hemorrhaging and oxygen deficiencies affecting brain function, particularlymemory. Many other birth-weight-related deficits, behavioral as well as cognitive,do not show until school begins. Public schools do help children with specialneeds achieve much in life, but schools heavily segregated by race and class havelarger proportions of LBW children, making education at those sites harder andTable 3. Percentage of live births very preterm and preterm and percentageof live births of very low birth weight and low birth weight, by race andHispanic origin of mother: United States, 200617 Very Preterm Preterm All white black Hispanic All races white black Hispanic races 2.04 1.66 4.08 1.80 12.8 11.7 18.5 12.2 Very Low or Extremely Low Birth Weight Low Birth Weight All white black Hispanic All races white black Hispanic races 1.49 1.20 3.15 1.19 8.3 7.3 14.0 7.0http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 9 of 52

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more expensive.18 And, at the end of the day, the students are much less likely toachieve at levels they could have if society had invested in them and their parentslong before kindergarten. The rise in multiple births since 1990, which has led to more live births ofchildren with LBW and lower gestational time, also affects later schoolperformance. The increase has been associated with more neonatal cognitiveproblems among all races, including 2.6 times more frequent displays of AttentionDeficit Hyperactivity Disorders (ADHD) among the LBW children.19 Therelationship between birth weight (and its correlate, gestation age) andintelligence has long been known, although there is disagreement over how largethe correlation may be and how much birth weight may affect intelligence.20 Ananalysis of existing research that looked only at studies meeting high standards formethodology identified 15 studies of premature babies that: 1) matched pretermchildren to a control group of full-term children, and 2) included measures ofcognitive outcomes at school age.21 The results were clear: Control children hadsignificantly higher cognitive scores than children born preterm. About 11 IQscore points separated the two groups. Although the relationship between birthweight or gestational time and intelligence is near zero among children withnormal birth weight or gestational time, this is not so for LBW children. AmongLBW children the correlation between birth weight and IQ (or gestation time andIQ) is about .70.22 This analysis does not endorse those who give importance to small IQdifferences. Children vary in measured IQ and behavior enormously, and giventhe variability common to classrooms, a child varying a few IQ points one way orthe other is not likely to cause classroom teachers or schools to notice anythingunusual. The same is true of an occasional child who is harder to manage becauseof ADHD. But when a particular racial group on the whole experiences medicaland social circumstances that lead much more often to LBW children, and whensuch children are then segregated by schools, their differences affect classroominstruction and the functioning of entire schools in systemic and negative ways. There are additional problems associated with poverty and the intrauterineenvironment. If alcohol, tobacco, and cocaine use are higher in poorneighborhoods, as is often found, then the schools in those neighborhoods alsowill have more children whose intrauterine environment was compromised. Datasuggest that intrauterine exposures to alcohol, cigarettes and cocaine areindividually related to reduced head circumference, reduced cortical gray matter,and reduced total brain volume, as measured by MRIs taken at school age.23 Thegreater the number of exposures to the different substances in utero—as, forexample, to two legal drugs, alcohol and cigarettes—the greater the loss of brainvolume and cortical grey matter. Each of these three substances is thought to act cumulatively duringgestation to exert lasting effects on brain size and volume, effects likely todiminish any school’s aspirations about educational outcomes if it serves a greaterpercentage of poor children. Alcohol definitely is dose-related: the moreconsumed during pregnancy, the greater the chances of an impaired infant.Interestingly, the most consistent findings of impairment in children are thosehttp://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 10 of 52

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related to mothers who smoked and drank—that is, the legal drug users.Marijuana and cocaine use during pregnancy seem to have smaller effects on theneonate. On the other hand, amphetamine and methamphetamine use duringpregnancy has much greater long-term behavioral and cognitive outcomes onchildren than does the use of alcohol or tobacco.24 Other prenatal conditions affect the neonate and school child as well. If flushots are not free, poor people do not receive them as frequently as do people whoare better off. Yet influenza in the first half of pregnancy is associated with a rateof schizophrenia three times that found in the general population, while influenzaduring the first trimester is associated with rates of schizophrenia that are seventimes the normal rates in the population.25 Clearly, mental problems in thedifferent income groups in society are not randomly distributed. Similarly, themost common viral infection in pregnancy is cytomegalovirus (CMV), which hasbeen associated with autism spectrum disorders and learning disorders.26 Theoverall rate of such infections in neonates is low, but a meta-analysis revealed thatit is much higher among the non-white and lower-income populations. Maternal obesity is another factor affecting prenatal life, and such weightproblems are also more prevalent in lower-income and among less well-educatedwomen. Obese women frequently have or are developing diabetes, and eithersituation leads to more problems in pregnancy, including serious birth defects,preterm births, and growth retardation.27 Lower-income women also have morestress and anxiety during pregnancy than do those of higher income—anotherfactor that results in a greater frequency of LBW children.28 Infants of anxiousmothers are also found to cry more, starting a vicious feedback loop in which amother’s anxiety prompts a newborn’s unhappy response, thereby increasing themother’s anxiety, potentially leading to an even greater negative response by thenewborn, and so forth. Mothers who are anxious, depressed, or both also havechildren with a higher rate of sleep disturbances, temperament and attentiondisorders, and displays of inappropriate behavior at school age. Again, the overallincidence of these personal, familial and societal problems is small, but theoccurrences of problems in children are not random across family income groupsand neighborhoods. When the children affected negatively due to prenatalconditions are clustered into economically and racially segregated neighborhoods,the low rates in the general society become high rates of need at the neighborhoodschool site. Given the evidence on how prenatal conditions and a mother’s mental andphysical health may affect an infant’s later cognitive and behavior functioning, itis clear that the achievement gap cannot be simply attributed to the performanceof teachers and administrators in schools that serve the poor, especially poorAfrican Americans.OSF2: Medical care and schooling Few would deny that it would be a challenge to learn easily, or to meethigh academic standards, if a child or a member of a child’s family has unmetneeds for medical care. Similarly, few would deny the increased challenge ofhttp://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 11 of 52

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teaching classes where excessive student or student family illness is substantiallymore common. Medical insurance moderates these challenges for many studentsand their teachers. Yet in 2007, the number of those in the U.S. without healthinsurance was 45.7 million, or 15.3% of the population. The number of childrenunder 18 years of age without insurance was 8.1 million, or 11% of all children.29These data do not include the additional children and adults covered by insurancepolices that require large copayments or have limited coverage, discouragingthose with such policies from seeking needed medical care or from purchasingneeded medication. Thus, the underinsured add to the educational challenges aschool faces due to illnesses among the uninsured. Furthermore, the troubling datacited above were gathered before the downturn of the economy and the large lossof jobs in 2008, a trend predicted to continue throughout 2009 and beyond. Giventhe employer-supplied insurance system in the U.S., the increasing unemploymentis bound to swell the ranks of the medically uninsured, increasing the challengespublic schools face due to illness among students or their families in the coming18-24 months. If a lack of medical insurance (and its correlate, untreated illness) weredistributed equally across society, local public schools would all have the samechallenges, with instructional problems due to increased illness and untreatedinjuries dispersed across schools. Schools and teachers would share equally thedifficult job of dealing with more common and frequent absences among the un-and underinsured because of illness or because of the need to care for ill siblingsor parents. The challenges would be distributed across class and racial lines,equally across all neighborhoods. But this is not the case. The percentage of uninsured among those earning more than $75,000 peryear is 7.8% (surprisingly high among people who can probably afford healthinsurance). But the uninsured rate among those earning $50,000-$75,000 is nearlydouble that, 14.5%. For those earning $25,000-$50,000, the rate of uninsuredpeople rises to 21.1%, more than one in five. And for the lowest wage earners inthe US, those earning less than $25,000 per year, the rate of medically uninsuredpeople is 24.5%, about one in four. Thus, approximately 23% of all those earningunder $50,000 per year (about the median U.S. income in 2007) are uninsured.30The poor are disproportionately represented among the uninsured, but it is not asurprise to find that whites have the highest rate of medical insurance while black,Hispanic, American Indian and other minorities have much lower rates (see Table4). The lack of medical insurance is much more common in the lives of racial andTable 4. Percentage Uninsured by Race and Ethnicity(Averaged over the years 2005-2007)31 white, not Hispanic 10.6 black 19.6 American Indian and Alaska Native 32.1 Asian 16.5 Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander 20.5 Hispanic (any race) 32.8http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 12 of 52

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ethnic minorities as well as the poor of any background, affecting their physicaland mental health and their family’s functioning. In turn, the schools that servepoor and minority children are most heavily affected. Further, the problem of inadequate health insurance is spreading acrossclass lines, so that it will soon negatively affect achievement in a greaterpercentage of the nation’s schools as increasing numbers of students lack medicalcare. Among those without health insurance, 68% reported forgoing neededmedical care because they lacked money; they did not see a doctor when theywere sick, fill prescriptions they had received, or take recommended diagnostictests or treatments. Moreover, 53% of the underinsured reported that same set ofproblems.32 The underinsured, because of barriers such as high deductible levelsbefore reimbursement, limited coverage of illnesses, and the need for substantialco-payments, are beginning to resemble the uninsured. Forty-five percent of theunderinsured reported having difficulty paying their bills, having been contactedby collection agencies for unpaid bills, and having been forced to curtail their wayof life to pay their medical bills. In fact, 21% of those with “adequate” healthinsurance noted the same problems. These patterns have consequences for children’s school achievement.Research confirms what most people intuitively believe: childhood illness andinjury do affect school performance.33 Moreover, having medical insuranceimproves an individual’s academic achievement, probably most simply byreducing absenteeism. While it’s true that a person’s insurance status makes littleor no difference for some illnesses,34 at the aggregate level any group with morefrequent or longer-term illness will have lower achievement than another groupwith less illness for less time. And the availability of medical care helps mitigatemedical problems. Accordingly, poor urban and rural children as well as racialand ethnic minority children are groups that can be expected to show loweracademic achievement. Medical attention can mitigate conditions for these groups. A recent studymatched unusually well-funded Head Start county programs to ordinarily fundedHead Start programs in demographically similar counties. It found a large drop inchildhood mortality in children ages 5 to 9, with Head Start’s health servicesappearing as the causal factor.35 The study estimates that a 50% to 100% increasein Head Start funding reduces mortality rates in areas that Head Start mightreasonably be expected to affect by 33% to 50% of the control mean. Mostimportant, in the treatment counties, this was enough to drive mortality rates fromthese causes down to around the national average. If medical attention for pooryouth changes mortality rates and the rates of illness and injury that are precursorsto mortality, it’s reasonable to also expect such well-funded Head Start programsthat attend to children’s medical needs to make the challenge to the schoolsserving poor students considerably less daunting. Unfortunately, few poor schoolsenjoy such support. Rates for dental care follow a pattern similar to that for medical treatment,with comparable effects for schools that serve poor and minority children. Amongthose 2 to 17 years of age, in families earning more than about $80,000 per year,13.4% of youth had not seen a dentist in the past year. Among families living inhttp://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 13 of 52

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poverty (under about $20,000 for a family of four), 33.8% had not seen a dentistin the last year, a rate 2.5 times greater.36 Untreated dental cavities, while usuallyconsidered a personal problem, affect a student’s behavior at school as well.Toothaches interfere with learning. Among school-age youth 6 to 19, in familiesranging from below poverty level to 200% above poverty level, the rate ofcavities was about 32%. Among families below the poverty line, white youth hadthe lowest rate of cavities, with black youth showing higher rates and youth ofMexican background showing the highest rates.37 Children from poor families also have undiagnosed vision problems, andwhen they are diagnosed, follow-up care is less likely. In part this is because 12states currently do not require any vision assessments, either before or duringschool. While 36 states do require vision screening at school entry, 26 of them donot require follow up for children who fail the screening test.38 This plays out asone would expect: low-income families follow up on a problem uncovered in aschool screening at about half the rate of more affluent parents. In New York Citypublic schools, with a large percentage of poor and minority children, theestimates are that up to 80% of kindergartners and first-graders who fail a vision-screening test never see an eye doctor.39 Even worse, other research indicates thateven vision screening in schools has a very high failure rate in detecting visualproblems as compared to an examination by an eye care professional.40 The poorand uninsured often cannot afford such examinations. Simply put, children in poor families in most states are six times morelikely to be in less than optimal health, experiencing a wide variety of illnessesand injuries, as compared with children in higher income families. Even inmiddle-income families, children in some states are twice as likely to be in lessthan optimal health than those in higher income families.41 Health and income inAmerica are strongly correlated. As a result, schools that serve the poor, whetherurban or rural, almost always have more challenges to meet because of untreatedmedical problems among students and their families. This OSF impinges on thesocial relations and academic productivity of a school. This situation would likelybe helped if schools employed school nurses at the federally recommend level of1 nurse per 750 students. But the reality is that there is 1 nurse per every 1,151students, and about 25% of the nation’s schools don’t even have a school nurse.42Schools without school nurses or with the highest ratios of students to nurses aremore likely to be schools that serve the poor. Universal medical coverage, currently being discussed in Congress, wouldlikely help alleviate many of these problems, and the recent SCHIP legislationwill probably also help. In fact, because of the relationship between health andschool achievement, universal medical coverage, addressing an outside-the-schoolfactor, is arguably as likely to narrow the achievement gap as any inside-school-factor now known.OSF3: Food insecurity and schooling The easiest way to demonstrate the effect of poor diets, hunger, foodinsecurity, and related nutritional problems on student achievement is with ahttp://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 14 of 52

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powerful example from the research literature. Between 1969 and 1977,Guatemalan children in four villages participated in a randomized clinical trial ofa nutritional supplement. Some were given atole, a protein-rich enhancednutritional supplement, while others were given fresco, a sugar-sweetenedbeverage. When 1,448 surviving participants from both groups, about 70% of theoriginal sample, were interviewed and assessed cognitively at an average age of32, it was found that those children exposed to atole between birth and age 24months scored substantially higher on intellectual tests of reading comprehensionand cognitive functioning in adulthood than those not exposed to atole. Mostimportant, the cognitive gains were independent of years of schooling.43 Those who began the atole drinks after birth and consumed atole for a fewyears showed these effects, while those who began the supplement later did not.This corresponds to what developmental psychologists tell us: complex and rapidcognitive development takes place during the first three years of life. Theadvantage in schooling was greater for girls than for boys, but even for boys atoleconsumption in their first few years resulted in almost a half-year more schoolattendance than was true of the control children. The conclusion is that propernutrition early in life gives rise to greater intellectual functioning and higherlevels of education later in life.44 It is also worth reporting that the children bornof mothers who took either drink received a calorie supplement during theirpregnancy. This resulted in a LBW rate of 9%, while the rate of LBW childrenamong mothers that did not get the caloric supplement was 19%.45 As detailed inthe earlier discussion of birth weight, LBW is related to nutrition duringpregnancy and is an out-of-school factor that generates problems for children andthe schools they attend.46 Fortunately, food security in 2007 was adequate in almost 90% of U.S.households.47 But food insecurity still was recorded in more than 10% of U.S.households, affecting about 13 million homes that had difficulty providingenough food for all their members. More seriously, about one-third of the foodinsecure households, totaling about 4.7 million households and representing justover 4% of all U.S. households, were classified as having very low food security,a category representing more severe deprivation. And in over 20% of thehouseholds with very low food security, one or more members reported that onthree or more days per month they had nothing to eat. As was true for OSF’s discussed earlier, if rates of the problem weredistributed randomly throughout the population, schools would have little troublehanding problems caused by food insecurity. But this is not the case.48 Incomparison to the national average, rates of food insecurity were found to be 3.4times higher in households with incomes below the official poverty line; 2.7 timeshigher in households with children headed by single women; 2 times higheramong black households; and almost 2 times higher among Hispanic households.These data make clear that whatever the cognitive and behavioral problemsassociated with hunger, they will be felt disproportionately in the schools thatserve low-income, racially and ethnically segregated Americans. Although many (correctly) assume food insecurity is an urban problem, itis actually a rural problem as well. For example, Susan Phillips, a teacher at ahttp://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 15 of 52

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rural New York school, reported that one of her fourth-grade students alwaysseemed to be cranky and distracted at the start of the week, but turned mildmannered by Tuesday.49 She discovered that the cause was hunger. The studentreceived adequate amounts of food through subsidized school breakfasts, lunches,and after-school snacks, but over the weekend, he was unable to get enough foodat home. The school would resume feeding him on Monday, and by Tuesday hewas back to his usual self. Realizing this problem, the school became proactiveand started sending its neediest students home every Friday with a backpack fullof ready-to-eat provisions. Five of Phillipss twenty-eight students received thefood supplements, and Monday mornings became a lot easier. Phillips said shesaw a dramatic change in student behavior.50 Dozens of reports of the samephenomena are in the news, though most Americans have no idea of the numbersof children who are hungry on the weekends, and thereby deprived of thenourishment they need to be learning in school, especially on Mondays.51 Some schools have figured out that such nutritional deficits are affectingall-important test scores in this age of NCLB high-stakes accountability. So, theyprovide extra rich foods on test days, essentially calorie-loading students to givethem the energy they need to perform well. It works. Gains of from 4-7% on testsaccrue to the schools that calorie-load their chidren.52 Sadly, even knowing thatthis strategy works during test week, indicating convincingly that a district’schildren have trouble performing academic tasks on their inadequate normal diets,most or all of these school districts nevertheless continue with the less rich dietthroughout the rest of the year. They fail to address what they know to be truegiven their attempt to raise test scores through calorie-loading: many children aregetting diets that minimize their opportunities to learn in school. Food stamps for children are one of the means that the U.S. uses to reducehunger among children. But the number of children requiring food stamps hasbeen rising for the last eight years, straining the program’s budget (see Figure 4,following).53 The increases can be expected to be accelerate in 2008 and 2009 dueto the severe economic recession that began in late 2007. To make matters worse,the value of the food stamps has fallen dramatically with increases in food costs.For the 12 months ending November 2008, The Labor Department reports that thecost of groceries for home consumption increased about 7%.54 And it is staplessuch as bread (up 12% for the year), cooking oil (up 17% for the year), milk andeggs that have risen the most.55 This rise should be understood in the context ofthe relatively high cost of eating healthily. The U.S. Department of Agriculturehas determined what a Thrifty Food Plan (TFP) should be so that poor people areable to eat inexpensive yet nutritious food. The problem is that even if low-income families received the maximum food-stamp benefit, they still would notbe able to afford the TFP. The rise in food prices without a correspondingincrease in the value of allocated food stamps means that the poor simply cannotafford an adequate diet. In fact, the actual cost of the TFP is more than 35%higher than the maximum food-stamp benefit. In other words, a family of fourthat received the maximum food-stamp benefit and tried to follow the TFP wouldaccrue a $2,000 debt for food by the end of a year.http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 16 of 52

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in millions Starting in 1989, the number of children receiving Food Stamps rose for several years, then fell for several years, but has been rising since 2000. These numbers are expected to continue to rise with the onset of the recession. Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service, unpublished tabulations.Figure 4: Children receiving food stamps: 1989-2007 56 Pediatric researchers in Philadelphia have noticed this trend: we dont need the morning paper to tell us about rising food...prices. We see the evidence every day on the bodies of babies in the emergency room at St. Christophers Hospital for Children. Young children arrive anemic and underweight; some even require hospitalization to treat the health effects of inadequate nutrition. Research on more than 27,000 infants and toddlers by the Childrens Sentinel Nutrition Assessment Program (www.c- snap.org) finds that food insecurity has serious health consequences for babies and toddlers. It puts them at risk for poor health, increased hospitalizations, and developmental delays, which can jeopardize their mental and physical readiness for school.57To those who see infants daily, the evidence of a growing nutrition crisis is clear. More evidence comes from still other sources. For example, a November,2008 New York City survey reflects a growing nutritional problem there, withstraightforward consequences for schooling.58 It revealed that the number of cityresidents who report having difficulty affording food has doubled in the past fiveyears (see Figure 5, following). Currently about four million New Yorkers—thathttp://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 17 of 52

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50% 48% 45% 40% 38% 37% 35% 32% 31% 30% 25% 25% 20% 15% 10% 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008Figure 5. Percentage of New York City residents experiencing difficulty inaffording needed food, 2003-200859is, half of all New Yorkers—say they have trouble paying for groceries, a 26%increase since the survey conducted 10 months earlier. The newest surveyrevealed that 56% of households with children report having trouble feedingthem, an increase of 75% since 2003. In this same period, the rate of foodproblems for the lowest income earners went up almost 50%. And not even themiddle class (earning between $50,000 and $75,000 per year) has been spared inthis economic downturn. Since 2003, the number of middle-income households inNew York City that report needing assistance has more than tripled.60 The ethnicand racial breakdown reveals the usual: Between 55% and 60% of all Latinos andAfrican Americans experienced difficulties affording food, while white NewYorkers expressed the same needs at rates approximately 20 to 25 percentagepoints lower. In a city and nation of enormous wealth, fully 1.3 million NewYorkers currently rely on some sort of food assistance, such as food stamps, afood pantry, or a soup kitchen. Many of these are struggling families withchildren whom schools also help to feed. A broad spectrum of professionals such as psychologists, nutritionists, andphysicians agree that there is strong evidence that nutrition is linked with schoolbehavior and achievement.61 For children under three, it is likely that nutritionaldeficiencies will affect their entire school and employment experiences. In thewords of Brown, Beardslee, and Prothrow-Stith:http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 18 of 52

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There exists no “safe” level of inadequate nutrition for healthy, growing children. Even nutritional deficiencies of a relatively short duration—a missed breakfast, an inadequate lunch—impair children’s ability to function and learn. When children attend school inadequately nourished, their bodies conserve the limited food energy that is available. Energy is first reserved for critical organ functions. If sufficient energy remains, it then is allocated for growth. The last priority is for social activity and learning. As a result, undernourished children become more apathetic and have impaired cognitive capacity. Letting school children go hungry means that the nation’s investments in public education are jeopardized by childhood under-nutrition.62OSF4: Pollutants and Schooling Children and adults may no longer be aware that the reason Alice inWonderland met a “mad” hatter is because the hat makers of that time were oftenmentally impaired. Hatters commonly exhibited slurred speech, tremors,irritability, shyness, depression and other neurological symptoms, giving rise tothe expression “mad as a hatter.” They were driven mad by the mercury they usedin manufacturing hats in poorly ventilated shops. In recent decades, humans haveagain been affected. One way is by consuming too much fish with dangerouslyhigh mercury concentrations. Mercury, which enters the food chain throughpollution, is known to be a neurological poison that can cause a wide variety ofsymptoms that resemble ADHD when they occur in school children, includinghyperactivity and loss of focus. Coal-fired power plants are one of two large sources of mercury in theenvironment. More than 50% of the electricity in the U.S. is generated from suchplants, and regulation of their emissions has been inconsistent. The second majorsource is municipal waste incinerators. These burn consumer and medical wastecontaining mercury that escapes into the atmosphere. Although concentrations ofmercury are greatest close to the incinerator, the wind spreads it widely before itfalls to earth, where it becomes bio-concentrated in the fatty tissue of animals(and fish), along with other pollutants such as PCBs and DDT. These incineratorsalso release dioxins, known to cause cancer and suspected of causing neurologicaldamage. In addition, the incinerators release lead. Several pernicious effects ofdioxins and lead are relevant to this discussion. Although mercury poisoning is not likely to be a major problem for mostAmerican schools, it is significant for those that serve communities closest tomedical and municipal waste incinerators and to coal-fired power plants—andthese are communities of the poor. For example, when New York City wanted tolocate a new medical incinerator expected to release vapors from around-the-clock processing of 48 tons of waste a day, it selected the South Bronx.63 Itslocation was in the St. Ann’s church area, whose poor children have been vividlydescribed by Jonathan Kozol.64 It was placed among the city’s poorest andpolitically least powerful residents. They had to fight hard, for years, to get ithttp://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 19 of 52

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closed down, and that might not have happened at all had it not been for theparticipation of the richer and politically more powerful of the city, who joinedthe fight because their neighborhoods were also receiving fallout.65 Ohio found that 150,000 of its children live within two miles of apermitted medical waste incinerator. Again, those incinerators are not distributedrandomly. Seventeen percent of Ohio’s minority population lives within twomiles of a permitted incinerator, compared to 4% of white Ohio residents. Twelvepercent of those below the poverty line live within two miles of a medical wasteincinerator.66 Mercury “hot-spots,” regions with high concentrations of mercury, arealso being discovered. The levels of contamination reached in these “hot-spots”are known to cause brain and nerve damage in developing fetuses and youngchildren.67 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has shown that about6% of American women of child-bearing age have mercury levels in their bloodthat could harm their babies if they were to become pregnant. Again, these are nota random cross-section of American mothers-to-be, and their homes are notscattered randomly throughout the land: the affected populations aredisproportionately poor and minority. Moreover, if pollutants such as mercury affect the health and behavior ofpoor people more because their exposure rates are higher, then the effects of thesetoxic agents will be found more frequently among children in schools serving thepoor (who are also more likely to black and Hispanic). Schools that serve childrenfrom wealthier, predominantly white families are unlikely to face the extrachallenge that occurs when trying to teach the few additional children in eachgrade who have cognitive and behavioral problems caused by mercurycontamination. Lead is another major pollutant affecting children’s behavior. A January,2009 news report from Senegal began: First, it took the animals. Goats fell silent and refused to stand up. Chickens died in handfuls, then en masse. Street dogs disappeared. Then it took the children. Toddlers stopped talking and their legs gave out. Women birthed stillborns. Infants withered and died. Some said the houses were cursed. Others said the families were cursed. The mysterious illness killed 18 children in this town...before anyone in the outside world noticed. [The doctors] did not find malaria, or polio or AIDS, or any of the diseases that kill the poor of Africa. They found lead. The dirt [in the area] is laced with lead left over from years of extracting it from old car batteries. So when the price of lead quadrupled over five years, residents started digging up the earth to get at it.68 The neurological damage caused by lead pollution has been commonknowledge for about a century, but even over recent decades, tragic effects suchas this have been documented in families and communities around the world.http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 20 of 52

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Even after some obvious sources of lead in the environment were finally banned,reducing the numbers of children showing effects, too many children in theUnited States are still affected.69 Deteriorated leaded paint and elevated levels of lead-contaminated housedust are found in about 4.5 million U.S. homes with young children. As a result,there are about a half a million lead-poisoned children in the U.S., and a huge butuncounted number of adults have lived lives of lower quality because they wereaffected by this highly toxic metal.70 The urban Northeast is home to a highpercentage of housing built when concentrations of lead in paint were at theirpeak (before 1950)—and these buildings are now home to high concentrations ofpoor and minority children. Not surprisingly, the problem of lead poisoning isespecially dramatic in these locations, and their schools face significantchallenges related to lead-poisoning of the children. In Providence, R.I., for example, 20% of the children who enteredkindergarten in 2003 were found to have been lead-poisoned.71 That’s one in five;five children in every class of 25. Although none of these children are likely to diefrom the lead, their low-level, clinically asymptomatic lead poisoning may wellhave lifelong, crushing effects, including diminished learning capacity andbehavioral problems such as attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity—allaffecting school performance. Ultimately, even low doses of lead can limitprospects for employment and stigmatize a whole ethnic or racial group as “lowin ability” when they are more accurately classified as “high in lead.”72 It is now understood that there is no safe level of lead in the human body,and that lead at any level has an impact on IQ.73 Small doses from paint on toys orin cosmetics have the power to subtly harm children. The present-day cut off forconcern about toxic effects is usually a measured lead level of 10 micrograms perdeciliter of blood (10 µg/dl). Anything higher than this is considered unsafe by theU.S. government. However, a five-year study of 172 children indicates that leadcauses intellectual impairment even at much lower levels. The researchers foundthat as lead levels went from 1 to 10 µg/dl over the course of this longitudinalstudy, the IQ scores for children showed a roughly linear decline of 7.4 points.These data demonstrate that even very small changes in lead contamination canhave serious long-term effects.74 Another study replicating the finding that lowlevels of lead significantly affect IQ also found that ADHD children, compared tocontrols, showed elevated (though levels still technically consider low) levels oflead in their blood. The hyperactivity and impulsivity seen in these children wasattributed to poorer cognitive controls due to the effects of lead on the brain.75 Other pollutants affecting adults and children are the ubiquitous industrialchemicals known as PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls). PCBs are related to aclass of compounds known as dioxins. Though banned in 1979, they havepersisted in the environment and are stored in human fatty tissue.76 Before theirban, PCBs entered the environment during their manufacture and use in theUnited States. But PCBs are still released into the environment from poorlymaintained hazardous waste sites, illegal or improper dumping of PCB wastes,leaks or releases from electrical transformers containing PCBs, and disposal ofPCB-containing consumer products into municipal or other landfills not designedhttp://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 21 of 52

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to handle hazardous waste. PCBs are also released into the environment bymunicipal and industrial incinerators. They do not readily break down andtherefore may remain for long periods of time cycling between air, water, andsoil. PCBs are carried long distances, having been found in snow and sea water inareas far away from where they were released into the environment. As aconsequence, PCBs are found in environments all over the world. Numerous studies now show a dramatic effect that appears related tocontamination by exposure to PCBs: a change in male/female birth ratios. Eithermale (Y-chromosome carrying) sperm or the survival of male fetuses is beingaffected by the level of PCB exposure, although other pollutants may also beinvolved.77 Among the steepest declines in the ratio of the sexes observed in theworld are those on the 3,000-acre Aamjiwnaang (pronounced AH-jih-nahng) FirstNation reservation in Canada. Although a typical ratio throughout North Americais for boys to be born in slightly greater numbers than girls, on the reservation theratio of boys to girls began dropping in the early 1990s. Only 35% of the 132recorded births between 1999 and 2003 were boys. Additional analysis showedthat from 2001 to 2005 boys made up only 42% of the 171 babies born to those onthe reservation or nearby.78 The factories around the reservation are thought to bethe cause of what appears to be chemical damage to the human endocrine andreproductive system. The reservation is surrounded on three sides by dozens ofpetrochemical, polymer, and other chemical manufacturing plants. Mercury andPCBs were found to contaminate the creek that runs through the reservation.Studies of air-quality show the highest toxic releases of these chemicals in all ofCanada.79 Poor, ethnic minority Canadians are bearing the brunt of the apparentenvironmental poisoning. It should also be noted that the Aamjiwnaangreservation is directly across from Port Huron, Michigan, which is near thechemical and manufacturing plants that surround Detroit, a majority-minoritycity. Effects of PCBs on nervous system development have been studied inmonkeys and other animal species. Newborn monkeys exposed to PCBs showedpersistent and significant deficits in neurological development, including visualrecognition, short-term memory and learning. Some of these studies wereconducted using the types of PCBs most commonly found in human breast milk.80Studies with humans in Michigan and New York, as well as in Taiwan, Holland,Germany and the Faroe Islands, have all reported negative associations betweenprenatal PCB exposure and measures of cognitive functioning in infancy orchildhood.81 The German study also found postnatal PCB exposure to beassociated with decreased cognitive function in early childhood.82 The similarobservations in humans and animals provide strong support that PCBs and relatedchemicals are causally related to a set of negative neurobehavioral effects. Many other pollutants also affect health and learning in schools. Pesticidesoffer one example. These are used more frequently in inner cities, due to thelarger presence of vermin. But so-called “cosmetic pesticides,” those used to keeplawns beautiful, also have effects on suburban dwellers. Infants and children maybe especially sensitive to health risks posed by pesticides for several reasons: theirinternal organs are still developing and maturing; in relation to their body weight,http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 22 of 52

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infants and children eat and drink more than adults, possibly increasing theirexposure to pesticides in food and water; and children’s behaviors, such asplaying on floors and lawns, or putting objects in their mouths, increase a childsexposure to pesticides used in homes and yards. It should be remembered thatthe majority of pesticides (and other toxic substances) in commercial use todaywere evaluated based on the hypothetical healthy 70 kg adult male, and not the7-kg child, or the less-than-14-gram embryo.83 The greatest effects of toxic pesticides are found in agricultural workersand their families. In the West these are often poor Hispanic workers. TheFederal National Hispanic Health and Nutrition Examination found, aftercontrolling for a large set of child and family characteristics, that children ofparents exposed to more pesticides were themselves more likely to developchronic conditions and less likely to attain good health than children ofunexposed parents.84 In addition, children from low socioeconomic statusfamilies proved most vulnerable to health shocks from pesticides and relatedenvironmental toxins.85 Therefore, schools that serve these children, particularlyin rural agricultural regions, have an extra set of health problems to deal withdue to the illnesses of family members and the children themselves, relativelyfew of whom have medical insurance. Since these children are also more likelyto be English Language Learners, their schools face even greater challenges. Itis difficult to believe that many schools that serve such needy children can keeppace with Adequate Yearly Progress on the way to 100% proficiency, asrequired by the NCLB law. Finally, there is the issue of air quality, which affects poor children andtheir families in larger numbers than it does wealthier children. The SouthBronx, for example, has one of the highest incidences of asthma hospitaladmissions in New York City. A recent survey of asthma in the South Bronx’sHunts Point elementary schools (a poor section of New York City) found anasthma prevalence rate of 21-23%. The South Bronx is surrounded by at leastfour major highways; at the Hunts Point Market alone, some 12,000 trucks rollin and out daily. A five-year research study found that soot particles spewingfrom the exhausts of diesel trucks were the probable cause of the alarminglyhigh rates of asthma symptoms among school-aged children in that area. As aresult, elementary school children’s asthma symptoms increased on high trafficdays.86 California, no stranger to air pollution, has almost identical data andfindings.87 And in 2008, the National Academies of Science confirmed thatozone, a key component of smog, can cause respiratory problems and otherhealth effects, including premature deaths, even if present for only short periodsof time.88 Smog effects tend to be largest in the inner cities, where the poor livein the greatest numbers. Air quality, therefore, affects the health of families andchildren in those communities more frequently and more severely than in thewealthier suburbs—demonstrating once again that educating children in schoolsthat serve the poor is more difficult than educating children in schools that servethe wealthy.http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 23 of 52

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OSF5: Family relations, stress, and schooling As 2008 closed and the recession deepened, the Washington Post reportedthe dual effects of poverty and stress on families and their children. It wasn’t apleasant report.89 ....[C]hild welfare workers across the region are seeing a marked rise in child abuse and neglect cases, with increases of more than 20 percent in some suburban counties. Neglect investigations appear to have increased most, many resulting from families living without heat or electricity or failing to get children medical care. In Fairfax County [VA], for example, such cases jumped 152 percent, from 44 to 111, comparing July through October with the same four-month period in 2007.....Similarly, cases in Montgomery County [MD] increased by 29 percent, and Arlington County, with smaller numbers, was up 38 percent….In the District [of Columbia], there was an 18 percent increase in child neglect and abuse investigations.... 90 The well-established nexus between poverty and child abuse is reason formany child experts to be concerned that the country might see more neglect andabuse as the current recession deepens. The Washington Post article continues: History and experience tell us when the economy is bad and unemployment rises, children dont do well. [For example], [a]bout a month ago, Allison Jackson began to notice an increase in the number of children coming into the emergency room at Childrens National Medical Center in the District with burns, broken bones, fractured skulls and injured stomachs. Puzzled, she called colleagues across the country, who told her that they, too, noticed an increase in child abuse cases. “Were seeing parents facing unemployment, foreclosure, losing their automobiles....And that increase in stress can lead to drug and alcohol abuse, and thats directly linked to child abuse.” In Alexandria [VA], [the] director of social services, said that... her area has seen a 13 percent rise in investigations of child abuse and neglect... [with many] more instances in which domestic violence seemed to be part of the complaint. “That seemed to be related to the economy,” she said.91 It is estimated that some form of serious family violence occurs annuallyin 10-20% of U.S. families, again with variation by race and class.92 The numbersof individuals affected by such violence, then, are quite high. Family violence ismuch more likely to be directed at females than males, and it occurs morefrequently among the poor than the middle class and wealthy. In fact, studiesconsistently show that 50% to 60% of the women who receive public benefitshttp://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 24 of 52

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have experienced physical abuse by an intimate partner at some point during theiradult lives. Other data suggest this rate may be as high as 82%. As many as 30%of women on public benefits report abuse in their current relationship, and asignificant number of these woman reported that they had suffered physical andsexual abuse in childhood.93 Racial and ethnic rates of familial violence vary as well. For example,when male and female Hispanics were surveyed in Texas, it was found that 64%of them indicated that they or a member of their family have experienced at leastone form of domestic violence in their lifetime. Almost two out of every fiveHispanic females in Texas (39%) reported experiencing severe abuse, and about 1out of every 5 Hispanic Texas females (18%) reported being forced to have sexagainst her will. In a study that confirms other research about the immigrantexperience and family life, as well as the effects of poverty and the stresses ofcoping with a new country and a new language, 48% of immigrant Latinasreported that their partner’s violence against them had increased since theyimmigrated to the United States.94 Similarly, black females have experienced intimate partner violence at arate 35% higher than that of white females and many times the combined rate ofwomen of other races. In fact, the number one killer of African American womenbetween 15 and 34 years old is homicide at the hands of a current or formerintimate partner. Black males do not fare much better, though the rate of violenceagainst men is considerably less than it is against women. They experiencedintimate partner violence at a rate about 62% higher than white males, and manytimes the combined rate of men of other races.95 It should not be surprising to find that domestic violence impairs theability of parents to nurture the development of their children. Mothers who areabused may be depressed or preoccupied with the violence. In turn, they oftenappear to be emotionally withdrawn or irritable. They may communicate feelingsof hopelessness. The result of familial violence is too often a parent who is lessemotionally available to his or her children, or unable to care for the childrensbasic needs. Battering fathers have been found to be less affectionate, lessavailable, and less rational in dealing with their children.96 Children from families that suffer from violence, from whatever incomegroup and race, often display social and emotional problems that manifestthemselves in the schools they attend. Too often these children show higher ratesof aggressive behavior, depression, anxiety, decreased social competence, anddiminished academic performance. In a study of low-income pre-school childrenin Michigan, nearly half (46.7%) had been exposed to at least one incident ofviolence in the family.97 In fact, estimates are that between 3 million and 10million children witness family violence each year. That affects the schools.Children exposed to violence were found to suffer symptoms that resemble post-traumatic stress disorder. They showed increased rates of bed-wetting ornightmares, and they were at greater risk than their peers of having allergies,asthma, gastrointestinal problems, headaches and flu.98 Further, there is nowample evidence that stress during childhood because of poverty, family violence,parental depression, rejection by caretakers, and so forth has physiological effects,http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 25 of 52

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changing the hormonal levels and the architecture of a child’s brain. Loving andsecure relationships with caregivers early in life lead to mentally andphysiologically healthier children.99 There are two factors to consider in these depressing data. One is that suchfamilies and children are overrepresented among the poor and in the AfricanAmerican community, increasing the difficulty of the instructional and counselingmissions of schools that serve those populations. Secondly, the effects thesetroubled children exert on others in the classroom are strong.100 For example,within an elementary grade cohort, an increase in the number of children fromfamilies known to have a history of domestic violence shows a statisticallysignificant correlation to a decrease in the math and reading test among thosestudents’ peers, and to an increase in disciplinary infractions and suspensionsamong the peers as well. These negative effects were primarily driven by troubledboys acting out, but the effects were present across gender, racial lines andincome levels. The researchers estimate that adding one more troubled boy peer toa classroom of 20 students reduces the overall test scores of boys by nearly twopercentile points.101 Girls seem to be less affected by the presence of anothertroubled child. Overall, however, when another troubled child of either sex isadded to a class, the mean test score of the class drops by about two-thirds of apercentile, and the probability that disciplinary infractions will occur increases by16%. The data analysis even revealed that when a child shares a classroom with avictim of family violence, she or he is likely to perform less well than a siblingwho attends the same school but in a different classroom with peers experiencingless domestic violence. This study provides support for teachers and parents whobelieve that “One bad apple can spoil the bunch.” And these negative adultattitudes, though rooted in reality, make the classroom and social lives of childrenfrom abusive households even harder, especially in schools with weak counselingprograms or few social workers. The rate of mental illness in the community is another outside problemthat generates problems within a school. A comprehensive study in Massachusettsrevealed that the base rate of mental illness in its wealthier communities wasabout 3%, but that rate more than doubled (to about 7%) in the state’s poorercommunities. The data set allowed a test of the direction of the relationshipbetween mental illness and income. Results strongly suggest that it was not onlythat mental illness makes people poor, as might be expected, but also that poverty,on its own, was a causal factor in making people mentally ill.102 These social(rather than biological or genetic) factors identified as a cause of much mentalillness makes much clearer the impact of poverty on families, and, in turn, theschools. Impoverished communities are toxic not only in terms of chemicals, butalso in terms of mental health and safety within the home. It needs to be noted again that although rates of severe mental illness aregenerally low, the mentally ill are not scattered equally throughout society. Whileeach school does have to deal with some problematic, perhaps difficult, parentsand children, the key question is whether the rates of mental illness in somecommunities are higher than in others, giving the schools in those communitiesextra responsibilities. One seriously mentally ill parent or child is difficult enoughhttp://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 26 of 52

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for a school to work with. Five such parents or children might stretch theemotional resources of the school’s staff to the limit. And the studies cited abovesuggest that the distribution of mental illness does indeed burden lower-incomecommunities the most. Schools serving the poor face still other challenges in addition to rates ofdomestic violence or mental illness in the community. Researchers have foundpoverty itself, even without the worst of its side effects, to have a negativeinfluence on family life and schooling. For example, poverty is a risk factor in thedevelopment of oppositional defiant and conduct disorders.103 Youth in transientpoverty, in particular, seem to externalize their circumstances in these ways. Thevolatility in their economic lives gives rise to volatility in their behavior, withaggression and hyperactivity being additional common responses to familyproblems. Other research suggests that poverty increases by 10% the likelihood ofa serious crime being committed.104 In addition, poverty predisposes one toanxiety and depressive disorders. Youth in consistent poverty are prone tointernalizing their stress in this way. They manifest psychosomatic problems andthose associated with anxiety and depression, perhaps because their biologicalsystems (hypothalamic, pituitary, and adrenocortical systems) are affected by thepoverty they must live with.105 Families that are poor, even if healthy physically and mentally, and withloving relationships among the members, are usually not as educated and hencenot as verbal as are middle-class families. Yet schools are institutions that dependon the language of instructors who are predominantly middle class and inpossession of superior verbal skills. They, in turn, are predisposed to reward thoseFigure 6. Cumulative vocabulary for 3-year-old children in three differentsocial classes106http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 27 of 52

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who are verbally adept. This, then, is another way that the poor are at adisadvantage in schools because of their disadvantages out of school. Research isclear that even before school begins for children, the rates of verbal learning infamilies of different income groups are remarkably different.107 These data arepresented in Figure 6 (previous). The language experience of the children shows that by about age 3,children from welfare families had acquired, on average, 525 vocabulary words,while children of working families had acquired 749 words. But by this agechildren of professional families had acquired 1,116 vocabulary words. Theseresearchers went on to assume that the patterns of verbal interaction they recordedin the homes of these families would continue in a similar way over time. So theyextrapolated from the data they had obtained through age three, to estimatelanguage experience by age four. They found that an average child in aprofessional family is likely to have experience with almost 45 million words,while an average child in a working-class family would have experience with 26million words, and the average child in a welfare family would have accumulatedexperience with 13 million words.108 What this research tells us is that, on average, the less affluent the family,the fewer words said to the child, and the less complex the language used. In fact,at age 3, the child from a professional family who had the smallest vocabularystill had a much more extensive vocabulary than did the child from the welfarefamily with the largest vocabulary.109 This restricted experience with languageearly in development seems to be causally related to academic achievement laterin life. Right from the start, at entrance to kindergarten, higher SES children werefound to have cognitive scores about 60% higher than did children from lowerSES families.110 It appeared that it was SES, not race or family structure, thatproduced the differences noted. This is consistent with other research estimatingthat the effects of poverty on cognition are at least as great as the effect ofparental education or innate intelligence.111 School success, apparently, is relatedstrongly to earlier engagement in consistent, extensive, and rich verbalinteractions with people who are more linguistically developed. This is exactlywhat is lacking in many poor families and in lower-income communities, and thismakes the job of the schools that serve the poor a great deal harder. Language conveys meaning and ideas, of course. So it is not surprisingthat the content of communications to children in families that differ in SES willshow differences as well.112 Recordings of language use at home reveal that atabout age 3, the typical child in a professional family was accumulating 32affirmative messages and five prohibitions per hour. This is a ratio of 6encouragements to 1 discouragement. The typical child in a working-class familyaccumulated 12 affirmatives and seven prohibitions per hour. This is a ratio ofabout 2 encouragements to 1 discouragement. But the average child in a family onwelfare accumulated five affirmatives and 11 prohibitions per hour, a ratio ofabout 1 encouragement to 2 discouragements. These data reveal clearly that theform of verbal interaction expected from adults and received by the children ofprofessional families is quite different than that expected and received by childrenfrom poorer families. Compared to lower SES children, these differences inhttp://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 28 of 52

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expectations about and experience with particular kinds of linguistic forms will nodoubt serve the higher SES children better when they encounter their first adulteducators. The compatibility or incompatibility of the language experiences athome and at school simply adds another source of family influence that makes itharder for schools that serve the poor to do well.OSF6: Neighborhood norms and schooling Income, race, ethnicity, and religion are all are factors that affect theresidential options of different people. Neighborhoods, therefore, have differentcharacteristics. Not surprisingly, then, one’s zip code has both direct and indirect,and both positive and negative, effects on student achievement. On occasion, aschool can substantially influence its own neighborhood characteristics and thusimprove student performance both directly and indirectly. Far more often,however, it is the neighborhood characteristics that affect schools and theirstudents’ achievement. One study of literacy achievement in 16 secondary schools with studentsfrom 437 neighborhoods showed the power of neighborhood as an independentfactor in student achievement.113 The neighborhoods were scaled to reflect socio-demographic characteristics, including overall unemployment rate, youthunemployment rate, number of single-parent families, percentage of low-earningwage earners, overcrowding, and permanently sick individuals. In this study,significant school-to-school variance in achievement was found, even whencontrolling for family background and neighborhood characteristics. This studyand many others demonstrate that school effects on achievement are real andpowerful. Research like this provides support for those who choose to focus onschools as the primary influence on achievement, and who downplay the effectsof out-of-school factors influencing achievement. In this same study, however, the variable labeled “neighborhooddeprivation” also showed a very large negative effect on educational achievement.This was true even after variation in the individual students and the schools theyattended were stringently controlled. This finding is much more than a trivialstatistic. For two students with identical prior achievement background, withidentical family backgrounds, and even with identical school membership, thedifferences in educational achievement as a function of their neighborhooddeprivation was estimated to be a difference of between the 10th and the 90thpercentile on an achievement test. In another study, these findings wereessentially replicated using mathematics achievement as the outcome.114 It isindisputable that neighborhoods independently have significant effects onachievement, often by weakening parental influences associated with betterstudent achievement. In neighborhoods in which it is difficult to raise children,too many parents have their decent family values undermined by neighborhoodyouth cultures that are oppositional, dysfunctional, or both. Every urban dweller knows that neighborhoods are reputed to havecharacteristics that either promote or reduce crime and deviant youth behavior.Schools whose attendance boundaries include dysfunctional neighborhoods,http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 29 of 52

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therefore, face far greater challenges in nurturing student achievement than dothose that draw students from healthier neighborhoods. This is illustrated by anews story from Chicago in the first half of 2007.115 The reporter comments onthe murder of 27 public school students in the city, a murder every 10 days duringthe school year, and vividly describes the effects of neighborhood violence on theschools. At Avalon Park Elementary School, the 8th graders in Room 104 still wrestle with the pain. It’s in the eyes of the young man who cannot bring himself to talk about last month’s brutal stabbing death of his classmate and best friend, 14-year-old Quinton Jackson. It’s in the tears of the girl reading a poem about missing Quinton’s smile and his mischievous antics. It’s in the unsettled voice of the child who recounts recent nightmares of dead bodies and coffins. Upstairs, in Room 301, the pain exists, but it’s harder to see. The teacher sees it, however, in the quiet temperament of the little boy who sits alone in the cafeteria because his best friend, Quinton’s 12-year-old brother, Marquise, is no longer there to eat with him. Marquise, too, was stabbed to death in an attack last month. But his friend sits there, alone, in the lunchroom, as if waiting for Marquise to show up. This is how the violent death of a student unhinges a school... [T]he deaths damage the community inside the school walls. Teacher Kevin Wiley... says his [fifth-grade] boys have been acting out more since Marquise’s death. They start fights and pick on each other. “They try to hide it, act like tough guys,” he said. “But I know they are hurting.” Teachers are not immune to the loss. Avalon Principal Geraldine Laury said she has found teachers sobbing. Staff members come into her office and break down at the mere mention of the Jackson boys. “Our hearts are heavy,” she said. Quinton’s teacher, Ernestine Jefferson-Martin, said the most painful part is watching her students cope with the loss. “Its a family in here and I am the mother,” she said. “I know how every child will react. I know who will cry and I know who will try to hide it. I can see and feel all the hearts of my children and I know there are a lot of broken hearts.”116 Journalism like this reveals the severe shortcomings of insisting onreforming schools using assessment of academic progress as the primary indicatorof school effectiveness. In its near total focus on manipulating in-school factors ashttp://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 30 of 52

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a means to improving standardized test achievement, NCLB misses the patentlyobvious interconnectedness of inputs and outputs. Some research in Chicago makes this clear. The researchers tried toidentify the causal factors behind the striking differences in the achievement ofchildren from various neighborhoods.117 They began by profiling 343 Chicagoneighborhoods. Characteristics such as poverty, unemployment, public assistance,immigration, age, race and class segregation, rapid population change, residentialmobility, home ownership, family composition, friendship and kinship ties,neighborhood participation, neighborhood responsibility, and neighborhood trustwere all measured. Neighborhood responsibility and trust were gauged by askinglocal residents such questions as “Can your neighbors be counted on to intervenein various ways if children were skipping school and hanging out on a streetcorner?” “If children were spray-painting graffiti on a local building?” “Ifchildren were showing disrespect to an adult?” The local residents were alsoasked whether people in the neighborhood were willing to help their neighbors,whether people in the neighborhood could be trusted, what they might do if thefirehouse nearest them were threatened with budget cuts, and so forth. Responsesto the trust and responsibility questions allowed for neighborhoods to bedescribed as having “low” or “high” collective efficacy.118 People in differentneighborhoods, as a collective force, were either more like “pawns” or more like“origins” in their behavior. That is, the people in different neighborhoods seemedto possess, collectively, a sense either that they were controlled by forces outsidethemselves or that they themselves had control over their lives. Collective senseof control (or “efficacy”) and the other variables were then compared to crimerates in each Chicago neighborhood. Collective efficacy accounted for more than 75% of the variation inviolence levels in different neighborhoods. This establishes low neighborhood“collective efficacy” as an important risk factor. Low collective efficacy is in turnassociated with violent crime and its many problematic correlates, all of whichaffect poor youth and the schools that they attend, as in the Avalon ParkElementary School, described above. These data also point out the power of highcollective efficacy in poor neighborhoods. The research suggests that highcollective efficacy can be a powerful factor in keeping poor youth inimpoverished neighborhoods on track for obtaining a more productive life. Neighborhoods also play a role in the verbal achievements of children. Forexample, it is common to find that the verbal achievement of poor and inner-cityschool children is low in comparison with that of children from wealthier andsuburban schools. Three hypotheses link neighborhood to those differences inverbal achievement, independent of the schools in poor neighborhoods, which areoften overcrowded, underfunded, and with less qualified teachers. First, in themost impoverished neighborhoods, and those with high rates of crime and lowefficacy, parenting factors, particularly the mental health of mothers, are known tobe more problematic (as discussed earlier in the section on family stress). Second,the size and the linguistic competencies of members of the speech community inimpoverished communities may be restricted, as has been found in studies of low-income families and in communities where immigrants live (see the section onhttp://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 31 of 52

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families, above). Third, because of widespread distrust, fear of violence, andisolating physical environments, public communication patterns for both adultsand youth in impoverished communities with low levels of collective efficacy arelikely to be severely inhibited. This is important because public speech is verydifferent from private and family speech. Familiarity with public speech patternsis a form of social capital, often unavailable to low-income students. Thus theentire communication infrastructure of impoverished and unsafe communitiesmay be a powerful negative influence on the verbal achievement of youth fromsuch communities.119 To test the hypothesis of cumulative effects on verbal skills as a functionof being raised in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty, researchers followedand questioned a large sample of Chicago African American children and theircaretakers for several years, no matter where in the U.S. they moved. Each newcommunity where they settled was rated as more or less impoverished than theones from which they came. Verbal ability of the children was assessed with acomposite scale made up of an IQ vocabulary test and a standardized achievementtest. The results showed that staying in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty(neighborhoods at the bottom quartile of income in Chicago) has a cumulative andnegative effect on verbal achievement independent of a host of other factors.120And being in that neighborhood for a lengthy period of time as a child mayinfluence verbal ability even if the child moves later in life. Growing up inconcentrated poverty results in about a quarter of a standard deviation loss inverbal ability. The authors of this longitudinal study say: ...durable inequality matters. Indeed, exposure to concentrated disadvantage in Chicago appears to have had detrimental and long- lasting consequences for black children’s cognitive ability, rivaling in magnitude the effects of missing 1 year of schooling.... Policy discussions of investment in children are to be applauded, but if our study is any guide, these discussions should be expanded to include a more comprehensive approach to investing in and thereby improving the neighborhood contexts to which children are exposed as they develop cognitive skills crucial for later achievement.121 A different set of researchers also found large effects of averageneighborhood income on children’s reading and mathematics achievement. Theirresults suggested that living in a low-income neighborhood may have a greatereffect on inequality in test scores than coming from a low-income family.122 Figure 7 (following) demonstrates that the characteristics of the studentbody in local neighborhood schools matters a lot. NAEP math scores for fourthgraders in 2005 are displayed for two groups: middle-class children and low-income children.123 It is not surprising that lower-income students do less wellthan middle-class students, as is clearly shown. But there is another importantlesson here. Low-income students attending the schools with little poverty (ashttp://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 32 of 52

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260 256 Low-income students 250 Middle-class students 250 245 241 239 240 235 Math scores 232 231 230 227 219 220 210 200 0-10 11-25 25-50 51-75 76-100 Percentage of students in school eligible for free or reduced-price lunchNote: “Low-income student is defined as eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, “middle-classstudent” as not eligible. Math scores are the average scores of public school students in fourth-grade mathematics on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) in 2005.Source: U.S. Department of Education, The Condition of Education 2006 (Washington, DC:Government Printing Office, 2006), p. 47Figure 7. Fourth grade NAEP mathematics scores for middle- and low-income children in schools that vary by rate of poverty124when they have rent subsidies and live in more affluent neighborhoods, or arebussed to schools with low poverty rates) score eight points higher, equivalent toabout half a grade level, than do middle-class students in high-poverty schools.Neighborhood norms and family traditions, interacting with local schoolcharacteristics, affect achievement in powerful ways. Families with enough money move out of dysfunctional neighborhoodsbecause they believe, as research confirms, that neighborhood effects are strong.They know that good parents too frequently lose their children to the streetsbecause neighborhood effects rival family effects in influencing childdevelopment.125 It appears that the absence of more affluent neighbors rather thanthe presence of low-income neighbors is more important for youthdevelopment.126 It is precisely those more affluent role models that are missing inlow-income neighborhoods. Without such role models for youth, the job of thelocal public school is much harder. So it is no wonder that poor parents givenhttp://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 33 of 52

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vouchers to live in better neighborhoods stayed in those neighborhoods, and theirchildren chose such neighborhoods to live in as they grew older.127 Even health is affected by neighborhood location, and that affectsabsenteeism, which in turn affects achievement. For example, as explained earlier,there are neighborhoods that influence the rate of childhood asthma or otherillnesses, affecting absenteeism, and thereby affecting school achievement.Building on that earlier discussion, consider the following data concerning thelikelihood that poor people’s neighborhoods are located in chemically toxic areas,with the corresponding impacts on health. Table 5 presents data that show thepercentage of minority residents in a zip code and the likelihood of proximity to ahazardous waste site.128 Some neighborhoods are clearly likely to be more toxic tochildren and their families than are others. The schools that serve thosecommunities can expect to see this reflected in increased absenteeism.Table 5. Minority proximity to environmental dangers in the USA.129Characteristics of a particular Zip Code Percent minority in that Zip CodeNo treatment, storage, or disposal facility is in 12.3zip codeOne treatment, storage, or disposal facility that 23.7is not a landfill is in zip codeA hazardous waste landfill, not one of the 22.0nations’ five largest, is in zip codeMore than one treatment, storage, or disposal 37.8facility, or one of the nations’ five largesthazardous waste landfill is in zip code But absenteeism rates in different neighborhoods are also determined byrates of family ineptness, family breakdown, the school curriculum, and childwillfulness. Moreover, absenteeism from school by neighborhood provides aseparate and powerful negative influence on local schools. It hurts the individualchild a great deal, placing him or her on a path to dropping out of school.However, children with good attendance at schools in neighborhoods with highabsenteeism also suffer because their teachers have to give extra help to thosewho have missed classes, and they must re-teach material they have gone overbefore. New York City is probably not unlike other major urban areas. It has highpoverty rates, with poverty concentrated by neighborhood and affecting schoolattendance. For example, during the 2007-2008 school year, in 12 of New YorkCity’s 32 school districts, well over 25% of primary school children werechronically absent from school. Chronically absent is defined as missing morethan 20 school days per school year—more than 10% of the school year. In five ofthese districts, fully 30% of primary school children, kindergarten through fifthgrade, were chronically absent. And, perhaps most shockingly, in six of thesedistricts, between 8% and 11% of primary school children missed 38 or more daysof school during the 2007-2008 school year.130 In that year, at least 30% of the children were chronically absent in 123individual New York City primary schools; in 96 of the city’s 366 middle schools,http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 34 of 52

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more than 30% of children were also chronically absent. In 27 of those schools,more than 40% were chronically absent. Norms for not going to school develop insome neighborhoods. Table 6 describes some elementary and middle schools, allfrom the same zip code in the Bronx, in which the norms for non-attending schoolare almost as powerful as the norms to attend school. From a third to a half of thestudents at these schools are chronic school non-attenders. It is unimaginable thatthese schools will ever make Adequate Yearly Progress unless some OSFs areaddressed first: neighborhood poverty, health care, immigration status, and mentalhealth problems are likely to be among the most important. But in suchneighborhoods, an engaging curriculum in a school where all children feelwelcome will surely help, as well.Table 6. The chronically absent in a sample of schools within a single zipcode in the Bronx, NYC.131 School Grades Number Percent Percent on free served chronically chronically and reduced absent absent lunch PS 2, Morrisania K-5 133 41.7 85.0 PS 132, PK-5 210 36.0 53.6 G. A. Morgan PS 53, PK-5 475 35.9 90.0 Basheer Quisim M.S. 301, 6-8 181 48.1 90.5 P. L. Dunbar PS 245, New day 6-10 196 45.9 84.5 Academy Poverty also has an impact on residential mobility rates—the rate at whichpeople move from place to place—causing problems similar to those caused bynon-attendance. There are primarily two types of residential mobility:opportunity-driven, where people move to seek a better life, and poverty-driven,where movement is necessary because the family cannot pay rent or experiencesdislocation for some other reason: foreclosure, illness, divorce, job loss, and thelike. A factor in mobility is that poor people have not seen gains in real dollars intheir income over the last few years, while the inventory of low-cost rentals hasshrunk.132 Even before the recent crisis, those who owned homes in 2006 wereseverely burdened by the cost. At that time 18 million home owners were payingmore than 50% of their income to keep their homes. Half of the members of thisgroup were from low-income households (those in the bottom quartile). Lookingat 2006 and at those low-income homes with children, after mortgage payments,on average, $257 a month remained for food, $29 for clothing, and $9 for healthcare.133 Because energy and food costs have been rising, and many job losseshave been associated with the recession that started in 2007, these homeownerswere among the most likely candidates to face foreclosure and increase the U.S.rate of residential mobility, already high compared to many other nations. Butrenting is also problem for low-wage earners; even in the lowest cost-of-livingcounties in the nation, a minimum-wage worker cannot afford a one-bedroomhttp://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 35 of 52

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apartment at local fair market rents without working more than 40 hours perweek.134 According to one 2008 report, about 6.5% of all children in the U.S. havebeen in their current home for six months or less. That rate climbs to more than10% among poor children. Thirty percent of the nation’s poorest children haveattended at least three different schools by third grade. Middle-class children havea rate that is one third lower. And compared to white children, black childrenwere found to be twice as likely to change schools this frequently.135 Schools thatserve poor and minority children, therefore, are most likely servingneighborhoods that have the highest rates of residential mobility in a region.Some neighborhoods also have within them many homeless families. Thesefamilies are even more mobile than the frequent residential movers, as they movequickly throughout a city or region seeking support. High rates of mobility andhomelessness in neighborhoods where poor people live place an extra burden onschools and teachers. An illustration of the problem comes from a school in an upstate NewYork city that had a mobility rate of more than 100% one year.136 New studentswere arriving and old students were leaving almost every day, often with nowarning to the school’s administrators. In a particular classroom, only three of thestudents who started that year remained throughout the year, while others enteredand left and were replaced by still other new students. Because of migrationpatterns among farm workers whose children were in this school, some of thechildren came, and went, and came back again in the same year.137 One child inthis school had been in seven different schools between kindergarten and thirdgrade. In schools with high mobility, instructional routines are disrupted, the paceof instruction slows down, and the design of the curriculum is driven by the needsof the movers rather than by those who stay. Administrative resources arediverted to incorporating new students and processing the records of students wholeave. As can be expected, teacher morale often falls and any sense of communityat the school is fractured. Transient students have more behavioral problems, and the more theymove the greater the severity of the behavioral problems teachers note.138 Those who move three or more times between the ages of 4 and 7 are 20%less likely than non-movers to graduate high school, after controlling for otherstudent characteristics. Those students who stay at schools with high turnoverrates suffer academically as well, and the student transiency even increases therate of teacher turnover.139 The evidence is persuasive that if the low-incomeresidential mobility rate could be brought down to the middle-class rate, theachievement gap between low and middle income students would drop by about8%.140 Similarly, if the mobility rate of black students were to equal that of whitestudents, the predicted reduction in the achievement gap between these twogroups would be 14%.141 Clearly both movers and stayers pay a price for living in neighborhoodswith high rates of residential mobility. Such neighborhoods are common and maybe increasing because of the nation’s current economic recession. High rates ofresidential mobility, along with other characteristics of neighborhoods noted inhttp://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 36 of 52

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this section, indicate how powerful an out-of-school factor neighborhoods can be.Neighborhoods exert influences on events inside schools serving poor andwealthy alike. But in poor neighborhoods that influence is likely to be powerfullynegative, while in wealthier neighborhoods those effects can be powerfullypositive. For example, in California’s tiny Ross School District, the communityheld an auction to fund increases in teacher salaries in order to attract the bestteachers in the state. A glass of lemonade, with a pass to play golf, went for$1,100. The 240 families in support of this one public school raised $1.3 millionover and above the budget the state provided.142 As John Dewey once noted:“What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must thecommunity want for all its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow andunlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy.”143OSF7: Extended learning opportunities and achievement As just noted, not all OSFs have negative effects on students. In this final,short section, some programs that can improve the education of youth,particularly poor youth, are discussed. These programs offer extended learningopportunities, and so they are all educational programs; however, they typicallyoperate separately from traditional school programs, and thus they are classifiedas an OSF influencing achievement. This section is also a reminder that education does not take place onlywithin schools. The many opportunities for learning outside of school, wheresome students learn more (and more easily), are not equally available across theincome groups. In addition, poorer students or their families who are not orcannot be motivated to take part in available out-of-school learning opportunitieswill not learn as well or as much as those who do.Summer programs When poor children enter high schools with students from a range ofincome groups, many have lower grades and lower test scores than their middle-class counterparts. They may also exhibit poorer study habits and less well-developed ideas about how to succeed in life. The student advising office mightthen suggest (or assign) to those students courses that are often less rigorous andnot necessarily college preparatory.144 Accordingly, from the first days of highschool a poor child’s job opportunities may be limited, as may be their potentialfor lifetime earnings.145 Thus, critical decisions are made at a student’s entry tohigh school. Yet what if their entering scores, which determine so much abouttheir future, were based not on their fall, winter, and spring achievements inregular classes over the course of the school year, but instead were based on theirsummer losses in achievement? This may be the case.146 Research suggests that, as a function of family dynamics, income, parentaleducation, and so forth, poor children do not grow in achievement during thesummer as much as middle-class children. Convincing evidence exists that about50% of the achievement gap between children of higher and lower incomehttp://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 37 of 52

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families at the start of high school is due to the cumulative lack of summer gainsamong low-SES children.147 Among the children studied, those in higher incomegroups had extended learning opportunities during the summer (travel, museumtrips, academic camps, summer school, and so forth) and therefore they appeared“smarter,” even though the lower- and upper-income children each had substantialachievement gains during the regular school year.148 The upper-income studentsappear to be better educated as they enter high school because they, in fact, arebetter educated. While that is based, in part, on OSFs such as those noted in theprevious sections, it also is a function, in particular, of lower-income students’lack of summer learning that promotes school learning. Summer programs, therefore, could help in reducing this gap by providingpoorer students a better chance to succeed in school. A recent review of 93evaluations found that summer school programs focusing on remedial,accelerated, or enrichment learning all can have positive effects on students’knowledge and skills.149 Program elements that seemed to make a biggerdifference in what was learned were smaller class sizes, more one-to-one tutoringor individualized instruction, and the requirement for some form of parentinvolvement. The problem is that these programs are not always available for orattended by the students (or their parents) who most need them.Preschool programs Preschool is another OSF that provides an opportunity for learning notalways distributed evenly across income groups. A recent and comprehensivemeta-analysis, examining 123 studies over five decades that focused primarily onlow-income children of lesser educated parents, found preschool to be associatedwith positive and relatively large effects on cognitive outcomes for childrenentering kindergarten.150 Preschool also clearly made a positive difference notonly in children’s academic achievements, but also in their social skills and intheir progress through school. As is often the case with early interventions, themagnitude of the measureable advantage that preschool provides fades over time.Preschool is, however, an OSF that can do much to reduce the gap between poorerand wealthier students at the start of kindergarten or first grade. If low-incomestudents can be provided with and attracted to high-quality preschool programs,the extended learning time does help ensure a good start to their school years.After-school programs Replacing excessive television viewing with organized after-schoolactivities is another way to extend learning opportunities. Students who watch sixor more hours of television each day—more often lower-income students—tend toscore lower on achievement tests. More generally, U.S. students spend more timethan their international counterparts watching TV, playing and talking with friends,playing sports, and using the Internet—time and activities (depending on thespecifics) not necessarily likely to improve educational attainment.151 Substitutingan effective after-school program could prove a productive alternative.http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 38 of 52

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A recent review of 35 evaluations of after-school programs havingexplicitly instructional aims and serving at-risk youth found that the programs onaverage produced gains in both reading and mathematics achievement, although thesize of the gains varied widely from program to program.152 Those more effectivein raising student achievement served the early elementary and high school gradesand included tutoring. After-school programs also had a positive influence on non-academic outcomes, although these effects were variable. Nevertheless, somecharacteristics of grass-roots, non-school programs for disadvantaged high-schoolage youth have been described that do appear to have lasting effects on characterand identity formation, shaping much more pro-social behavior.153 It should be noted that it is possible—even likely—that the students whoparticipate in these programs are those who are already on the track for higheracademic achievement, and that those who might most benefit from suchprograms do not attend, or do not attend with the regularity that might providebenefits. If this is the case, then programs themselves may appear more effectivethan they actually are, depending on the nature of models used by the researchers.Nevertheless, the overall body of evidence suggests that after-school extendedlearning programs could provide a way to improve school achievement,particularly if such programs can recruit the students who need them the most andif they coordinate their curriculum with the schools that students attend. In short, the negative effects of many of the OSFs discussed earlier might bemoderated by out-of-school educational programs like summer school, preschool,and after-school programs. These benefits are most likely if the educationalcomponent is strong, community support for the program exists, and if the programalso provides medical and social supports for poor children. High quality programswith the ability to attract the students most in need are badly needed. Conclusion and Recommendations Seven interwoven out-of-school factors that influence what occurs inschools have been described. Although the literature demonstrating the effects ofeach of these factors is sometimes controversial, existing evidence stillpersuasively suggests that OSFs do have powerful effects on schools. The effectsof many OSFs on low-income students make the job of schooling those studentsmuch harder. Moreover, the factors are intertwined, so their victims often are hitwith multiple blows. Pre- and neonatal factors overlap with medical andnutritional factors, and these factors are not independent of the environmentalpollutants, neighborhood, and family factors that have been described. These allrelate in turn to the availability of and participation in extended learningopportunities for children. All this strongly suggests that a good portion of the achievement gaps thathave become the focus of U. S. educational policy is caused by OSFs, andschools, as they are ordinarily configured, are not in a position to eliminate thosegaps. It also means that increased spending on schools, as beneficial as that mightbe, will probably come up short in closing the gaps. On the other hand, the gapshttp://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 39 of 52

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might shrink more readily if we spent our nation’s precious resources on suchstrategies as trying to:• Reduce the rate of low birth weight children among African Americans,• Reduce drug and alcohol abuse,• Reduce pollutants in our cites and move people away from toxic sites,• Provide universal and free medical care for all citizens,• Insure that no one suffers from food insecurity,• Reduce the rates of family violence in low-income households,• Improve mental health services among the poor,• More equitably distribute low-income housing throughout communities,• Reduce both the mobility and absenteeism rates of children,• Provide high-quality preschools for all children, and• Provide summer programs for the poor to reduce summer losses in their academic achievement. Economists already suggest that the black-white achievement gap can bereduced by 25% just by reducing residential mobility and improving theavailability of healthcare for black children and of mental health services for theircaregivers.154 That is a big effect for only three of the many OSFs discussedabove. It should also be remembered that the OSFs discussed in this brief notonly interact with each other; they also interact with a child’s genetic makeup inways we have yet to understand. Emerging research suggests that the effects ofpoverty can be severe enough that the genetic potential of children fails toexpress. What that means is that for poor children of any race and ethnicity wemore often see the effects of the poverty, not the effects of the poverty x geneticsinteraction.155 What is known now, however, is that these factors have asignificant impact on what occurs, and what possibilities exist for achievement,inside our nations’ schools. Inputs to schools matter. As wonderful as some teachers and schools are,most cannot eliminate inequalities that have their roots outside their doors andthat influence events within them. The accountability system associated withNCLB is fatally flawed because it makes schools accountable for achievementwithout regard for factors over which schools have little control.156 In part, forthis reason, NCLB is failing to show reductions in the achievement gaps on whichit is focused.157 A broader, bolder approach to school improvement is indeedrequired. It would begin by a reasonable level of societal accountability forchildren’s physical and mental health and safety. At that point, maybe we cansensibly and productively demand that schools be accountable for comparablelevels of academic achievement for all America’s children.http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential 40 of 52